Thinking of popping the question this Valentine's Day or anytime soon? Try doing it with this cool book.

Will You Marry Me: Seven Centuries of Love (Touchstone Hardcover; January 8, 2008) contains love letters from the Gothic to Victorian Era and is a fun read.

Boy, they don't make proposals like they used to!

These days grooms put their promises of love up in neon lights and plan lavish proposal scenerios. In the "old days" suitors wrote letters asking for the hand of their beloved. Sometimes they sent these requests by messenger or riders on horseback. Sometimes the bride did not know who the heck the potential groom was.

Helen Scheu-Riesz edited the collection and originally published it in 1940. The subtitle of the first version was "Proposals of the Famous and Infamous" because it also contains a few historically creepy suitors.

The book was revived and republished by Simon and Schuster this month on January 8.

You won't recognize all the names but the proposals are fun to read anyway. They include pledges of love from:

Samuel Parr (colonist, minister, judge in the Salem witch trials) to Jane Morgingale: "Madam, You are a very charming woman, and I would be happy to obtain you as my wife." She said yes.

John Hervey to Elizabether Felton: "To make thee happy shall be the sole drift & constant meditation of my soul."

Prince William of Prussia to Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar: “I can scarcely describe to Your Highness the excitement which fills my heart at this moment when I take my pen in hand to make the most important move of my life.”